Chuck
Too many messages? Chuck ‘em Free Developer 410 Labs, chuck.email Platform Universal Requirements iOS 10.0 or later
Our significant other has an inbox that gives us the willies: where our inbox is as neat, clutter-free and well-tended as a suburban lawn, their inbox is an untamed jungle full of crazed monkeys where messages hang around for months unread, and urgent messages of great importance are lost in a tsunami of spam. It’s as mixed as our metaphors, and what it really needs is a good clean-up, courtesy of Chuck.
This app’s purpose in life is to gather a whole bunch of messages and chuck them out of your inbox – or inboxes – either permanently or temporarily, so that you can get on with your life. It gives you a bird’s‑eye view of your email, grouping messages by subject, sender, or date, and it supports multiple mail accounts for those of us forced to use multiple addresses or aliases. As well as iCloud it runs Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, Comcast, Office 365, AOL, and Mail.com.
It’s ridiculously quick on even the busiest email account, and its interface works really well on iPhone: There’s an iPad version too, but we felt much more comfortable with Chuck on the smaller screen, where it feels just right when used one-handed. It supports landscape on Plus-size phones too, delivering a familiar if cramped two-pane layout that enables you to see messages - although if they’re formatted, only a few lines at a time.
Chuck isn’t the best way to read email, but it’s superb at organizing it. You can select huge numbers of messages at once and then move, spam, delete, star/unstar, or mark them as read/unread. The app has a “chill” option that hides messages for a specific number of days - handy if you’re on vacation, for instance.
Chuck’s built-in search is lightning fast, and the ability to manage multiple inboxes simultaneously makes email management effortless. If you work in the sort of environment where buttcovering emails ping all day long, or you take part in very busy email discussions, the app will save you enormous amounts of time. It’s not our favorite email app for everyday use, but when the going gets tough it’s the app we turn to to remove the dead wood.
the bottom line. If email feels like an avalanche, chuck all the inessential ones away, because this is a superb app for achieving inbox zero. gary marshall Chuck Very fast Multiple accounts Hide emails for days Not the prettiest app GREAT